The Role of Classroom Context in the Revision Strategies of Student Writers

This article reports on a study of the relationship between classroom context and the revisions of student writers. Specifically, the study examined the nature of the instructional context of the writing in one senior high school classroom and explored potential connections between particular features of the teacher’s approach to writing instruction and the frequency and types of revisions students in that class made to their essays. Drafts of students’ essays were coded for revisions, and results of the coding were examined with reference to specific features of the instructional method and related features of classroom context. Results of the study indicate that students in the present study, like students in some previous studies of revision, focused their revisions on surface and stylistic concerns. The study suggests that specific features of the classroom context, particularly the workshopstyle structure of the course, the interactions among students and the teacher regarding the students’ writing, and the nature of the teacher’s strategies for responding to and evaluating students’ writing, may have reinforced the teacher’s and students’ traditional views of writing quality and revision and may have thus contributed to the students’ focus on lower-level concerns in revision.